Rice experts in
Africa adopt a new way of doing business for
greater impact

As part of a
global program on rice science that has laid out
concrete and quantifiable key impacts to benefit
the poor, the hungry, and the environment in the
next 25 years, rice experts in Africa have
adopted a more interdisciplinary and
product-oriented approach in order to deliver
greater development impacts.

The innovative program known as the
Global Rice
Science Partnership (GRiSP) aims to
mobilize the very best of the world’s rice
science and involve the widest range of
stakeholders possible in the technology
generation and dissemination process to address,
among others, Africa’s major rice development
challenges.

“We acknowledge the urgency to conduct research
activities differently – to do more and to do
better, given the increasing poverty throughout
the world,” stated
AfricaRice
Director General Dr. Papa Abdoulaye Seck.
“GRiSP proposes a new global approach to
research and we are part of this program.”

Laying emphasis on the need for pooling
intelligence to better exploit the comparative
advantages of all the partners to address more
efficiently the constraints to rice production,
Dr. Seck spelt out 10 conditions that are
essential for GRiSP to become a successful
program and ensure a high degree of satisfaction
among rice farmers and consumers throughout the
world.

The conditions include the need to respect the
diversity of partnerships, regional differences
and institutional identities in the GRiSP, while
rejecting “hegemonic thinking.” “It is only the
synthesis of these differences that will make us
move forward,” Dr. Seck said at the recent
GRiSP-Africa
Science Forum held at AfricaRice in Cotonou,
Benin.

The conditions also specify the need for
equitable resource allocation based on the real
requirements of the various regions; the urgency
to strengthen the capacity of African
stakeholders; the significant role of the
national partners within the GRiSP; the
importance of continuous dialog with
policy-makers; and the need to avoid bureaucracy
as well as excessive evaluation where scientists
spend more time writing reports than doing
research.

The GRiSP-Africa Science Forum, which was
attended by over 100 international and national
rice experts, including representatives of all
the key partners, reviewed the progress made by
GRiSP in Africa in 2011. The results focused on
the development of new research products –
ranging from gene discovery to small combine
harvesters and policy briefs for decision-makers
– grouped under six GRiSP themes.

“We saw some exciting progress in
marker-assisted selection (MAS) work on
resistance to rice diseases and pests and
salinity. This work is very valuable in the
context of the changing climate in the
continent,” said AfricaRice Deputy Director
General & Director of Research for Development
Dr. Marco
Wopereis.

Dr. Marco Wopereis also highlighted the major
shift in focus from supply-driven research where
the emphasis is mainly on increasing rice
production to more demand- or market-driven
research, where the attention is given to the
entire rice value chain.

Dr. Achim
Dobermann, IRRI Deputy Director
General for Research & GRiSP Program Director,
who took an active part in the GRiSP-Africa
Science Forum, expressed his satisfaction with
the progress made by the Africa-based team in
2011, particularly with regard to the new way of
doing research.

“We live in a globalized world and we can move
much faster if we can learn from each other and
incorporate that knowledge into our own
thinking. And this learning goes in all
directions – from Asia to Africa, from Africa to
Asia, from Africa to Latin America and so on,”
Dr. Dobermann explained.

In his capacity as the outgoing Chair of the
AfricaRice National Experts Committee,
Dr. Babou
Jobe, Director General of the
National Agriculture Research Institute, The
Gambia, confirmed “100 percent support” to GRiSP,
particularly its major thrust on strengthening
national capacity. He was pleased to learn that
one third of the Global Rice Science
Scholarships had gone to African students in
2011.

The Consultative Group on
International Agricultural Research (CGIAR)
is a global partnership that unites
organizations engaged in research for
sustainable development with the funders of this
work. The funders include developing and
industrialized country governments, foundations,
and international and regional organizations.
The work they support is carried out by 15
members of the Consortium of International
Agricultural Research Centers, in close
collaboration with hundreds of partner
organizations, including national and regional
research institutes, civil society
organizations, academia, and the private sector.
www.cgiar.org -
http://consortium.cgiar.org.

AfricaRice headquarters is based in Côte d’Ivoire. Staff are located in
Côte d’Ivoire and also in AfricaRice Research Stations in Benin, Ghana,
Liberia, Madagascar, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Tanzania. For
more information visit: www.AfricaRice.org

About CGIAR

CGIAR is a global research
partnership for a food-secure future. CGIAR science is dedicated to
reducing poverty, enhancing food and nutrition security, and improving
natural resources and ecosystem services. Its research is carried out by
15 CGIAR Centers in close collaboration with hundreds of partners,
including national and regional research institutes, civil society
organizations, academia, development organizations and the private
sector.